City Council talks tough to Sonics: Will it work?

It’s always interesting when the Seattle City Council starts to get interested in sports.

This is the same City Council that a little over a decade ago came up with millions of dollars in bond money to remodel KeyArena for the Sonics – the same building the team now says is obsolete for its long-term financial health in Seattle.

It’s the same City Council that effectively took Seattle out of the running for an Olympics bid, then a couple of years later had some of its members eagerly sign on with preliminary festivities for the abortive Pacific Rim Summit Games that never came off.

It’s the same council that oversaw the millions in deficits rung up at the Seattle Center due to sagging KeyArena revenue.

Now, the council wants to wade in even deeper into the Sonics mess, only in what P-I reporter Greg Johns points out is a purely “symbolic” effort.

Basically, the City Council attempted to send a message to Sonics owner Clay Bennett on Monday by unanimously passing an ordinance binding the Sonics to their KeyArena lease through 2010, Johns reports.

Are there other locations, such as the Muckleshoot proposal or possibly the current site of Associated Grocers at the end of Boeing Field, that could work as new area possibilities?

Or do you believe it’s time to get politics out of sports and let the teams live and die on their own dime?

The council vote eliminates any potential for Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels to negotiate a buyout of the lease with Bennett, which was an idea first raised by the Save Our Sonics fan group pushing to put Initiative 93 on the ballot in Seattle next February.

Brian Robinson, co-director of Save Our Sonics, told Johns that his organization will now shelve its initiative signature drive and focus its efforts toward helping find solutions to the arena question.

Council members, Johns notes, hope the decision opens dialogue with the Sonics ownership group on potential long-term solutions, even though Bennett has consistently said he’s not interested in KeyArena and will seek to relocate the team if a new facility proposal isn’t on the table by Oct. 31.